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WOODLAND TO REPLACE LANDFILL Mother Nature getting back 400 acres of f ormer dumps By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, December 3, 2000

Forget a tree. Soon, a forest will grow in Brooklyn.

In East New York, to be exact.

Atop the former dumps on Pennsylvania and Fountain Aves. now grow mugworts, fragmites, some switch grass here and there and the occasional ailanthus, the tree that grows in Brooklyn.

The greenery doesn’t hide the rusted hulks of tire rims, the orphan gravel piles and stray dogs.

Nor can it eliminate the PCBs, other toxic wastes and pollutants, construction debris and household trash buried up to 130 feet high across the landfills’ 400-acre expanse before the dumps closed in 1985.

But onto this patchy landscape, ringed by Jamaica Bay’s splendor, an unlikely collection of interests has conspired to bring, of all things, a forest.

Starting in June and over the next four years, Brooklyn will host an experiment in landfill restoration, said John McLaughlin, director of ecological services for the city Department of Environmental Protection and the man behind the forest design.

The city will denude this acreage of its poor excuse for vegetation, cover the land with an environmentally approved plastic liner to cap the old landfills, then ship or truck in more than 1.3 million cubic yards of sandy soil.

The new soil – from a foot to 4 feet in depth – will provide the base for the forest.

McLaughlin’s design calls for 20 species of trees – 18,000 in all – 25 species of shrubs – up to 23,000 of ’em – and 30 species of grass and wildflowers across the two landfills.

All will be plants that grew on the coastline before European settlement.

In place of the landfill stench that used to waft over East New York, the aroma of hollies, birch, cedar, hickory, maple, oak and pine trees should fill the air.

There also will be trails for hiking and bicycling, picnic areas and perches for bird watching.

The price is expected to be $221 million.

McLaughlin, 40, was born in Astoria, Queens, and raised in Brooklyn. While other kids wanted to grow up to be Presidents or ballplayers, McLaughlin knew from the time he was about 10 or 11 that he would devote his life to horticulture.

“My aunt had a house on Long Island, and every summer I would go out there and plant a vegetable garden and do the shrubs and the trees,” he said. “I loved it.”

He has lived in Brooklyn since his family moved to Greenpoint when he was 2 years old. Today, he’s married and lives in Bay Ridge.

He said the East New York forest is by far the biggest project of its kind ever tackled in New York City.

“It’s a legacy to leave on to future generations,” McLaughlin said. “I’ll never get to see the final picture of what it’ll look like because it’ll take many, many years for the trees to grow to real appreciable size. But, if I could leave it on to my children or somebody else’s children to see, then that’s a wonderful thing.”

The forest, said Leander Shelley, a community leader who served on the citizens advisory committee that oversaw the restoration of the landfills, is a dream come true.

“I grew up here in East New York in the 1950s,” said Shelley, 57. “I remember the odor and the stench from the landfill, all the garbage being processed out there and dump.

“Now, people will be able to interact with nature here, in a setting like Central Park.”

The parties in this environmental reclamation are the residents who suffered because these landfills were their neighbor, the city DEP, the National Park Service, which owns much of the land as part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

DEP will be responsible for monitoring gas emissions and maintaining the closed landfills for up to 30 years.

A century ago, Brooklyn did not reach as far as the spot where the landfill is located, McLaughlin said. The city’s growth led to the filling in of salt marshes in the area, first for human use, then for waste disposal that began in the 1950s and 1960s.

“We’ll just set the table, then have nature do the rest,” McLaughlin said. “We can’t duplicate it 100%. If you put [in] the scaffolding of the primary species, then through nature on its own, dispersal of seeds from wind or migrating birds, other species that go with that community would also come in.”

The hollies and other plants will provide food and nesting places for mammals and other wildlife such as hawks, owls and migratory songbirds.

“If they plant a forest that is available for people to use, it would be a beautiful spot to hike and look over Jamaica Bay,” said Steven Clemants, vice president of science at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “With the height of that landfill and the view, it would be gorgeous. There’d be an amenities value to people.”

Shelley can’t wait.

I’ll be the first one walking up there when it opens up, or try to be, anyway,” he vowed.

GRAPHIC: TARA ENGBERG John McLaughlin (l.), director of ecological services for the Department of Environmental Protection, and Geoffrey Ryan stand on what used to be a trash dump. TARA ENGBERG Bird’s-eye view of 400-acre landfill that was shut in 1985 and is being converted to forest.

December 3, 2000
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KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY No One Likes To Think About Dying, But Estate Planning Is Your Most Important Financial Obligation By MICHAEL O. ALLEN

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, April 25, 1999

It wasn’t long ago that Gerald and Toby Sindler thought estate planning – setting up trusts so heirs are not hard hit by inheritance taxes – was something that only the wealthy needed to worry about.

“And we do not consider ourselves to be wealthy,” said Gerald, who owns Career Objectives, a Mt. Kisco, N.Y., personnel agency, with his wife.

But a brief course in financial planning opened their eyes.

“Even with modest assets, you’ll be surprised how quickly things mount up,” he said, “what with the house and life insurance, in addition to anything that we’ve managed to accumulate over the years.”

Gerald Sindler is now 59 years old. His wife is 56. The Westchester home they bought for $ 65,000 27 years ago, and now own outright, is now worth at least $ 450,000. And that’s just the beginning. So one day about a year ago they made an appointment with the Ettinger Law Firm, which specializes in trusts, estate and elder law.

What they found out shocked them.

“Our estate was in jeopardy not only from the government and the inequitable tax system, but if one or both of us became chronically ill, the absolute cost of long-term care would virtually eat up any finances we have,” Sindler said. In which case they could also forget about any inheritance they might want to pass on to their two grown children.

Today, with a will, revocable trusts that allow the couple to split their assets in equal halves (by law, each is allowed to protect up to $ 650,000 from inheritance tax), and a long-term health-care insurance policy, they are breathing a little easier.

The Sindlers are not alone.

A generation ago, planning your estate and writing a will was easily put off until much later in life. But changes in tax laws – and in the way Americans accumulate money and plan their retirement funds – have estate lawyers and financial advisers saying that everyone, no matter the size of their estate, should work out a financial plan and write a will.

A DREADED TASK

But estate planning is not something most people do easily.

Whether it is the misconception that they do not have enough assets to merit a proper will, or the too- common belief that they are invincible, many people put off dealing with it until “later.” Someone else will handle it, they say to themselves.

The main reason is fear. “This is always a hard conversation to have with clients because most people are not eager to talk about their own mortality,” said Betsy Dillard, an American Express financial adviser based in Manhattan.

“I feel obligated to have that discussion with my clients because wealth preservation is a critical element of financial planning,” she continued. “Think about it, you save and you save and you save throughout your life. Ultimately, it all comes down to who are you saving for.”

David Dorfman, a Manhattan estate lawyer, said one of the main advantages of estate planning is that it can help you stay out of probate court, or avoid costly guardianship hearings if the surviving spouse – or other heirs – should become seriously ill.

“If you don’t have a will, the court will appoint a public administrator to administer the estate and then the family will be paying unnecessary lawyer fees and other fees to strangers,” he said.

Most people want someone they love, or a charity or organization of their own choosing, to inherit that money, no matter how large or small the amount.

AFTER DEATH, TAXES

Another compelling reason to put your finances in order, according to Arden Down, Chase Manhattan Bank’s director of financial planning services, is the ravenous federal tax system, which imperils unprotected estates.

All a person’s assets at the time of death – cars, houses, jewelry, 401(k) and other retirement accounts, life insurance policies, savings and personal investment accounts – are counted as part of the gross estate and may be subject to taxes at a rate of 37% to 55%, regardless of the fact that taxes may have already been paid on many of these items, in one form or another.

“Isn’t that a dirty trick?” Down said. “If I’m aware of what’s going on from the other side of the grave, I’m now pissed off. I can’t take it with me, but I don’t like what’s happening to it either.”

The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 gradually increases the size of an estate that is exempt from federal estate taxes. This year’s limit is $ 650,000, and it is supposed to be raised to $ 1 million by the year 2006. The value of the estate above that amount at the time of a person’s death is subject to inheritance tax.

This has nothing to do with me, you say. I don’t have a million dollars to leave to my family, I don’t even have $ 650,000. Think again, says Michael Ettinger, head of the law firm the Sindlers are using. The strong economy is transforming households in the Northeast Corridor, especially those of the so-called baby boomers, and their attitude toward wealth preservation. And the effects of the long-running Wall Street bull market on the New York region, and in particular on real estate values, find even modest wage-earning homeowners with a net worth beyond $ 1 million.

And even those with assets well below the million-dollar mark need to think about their future, said Sandra Busell, a Nassau County estate attorney with clients in Brooklyn and Queens. An estate that consists of a house worth $ 200,000 and another $ 100,000 in various savings accounts needs estate planning too, she said.

A TAX-FREE GIFT

One of the ways to reduce the size of an estate – and any potential tax liability – is for both spouses to give each of their children an annual tax-free gift of up to $ 10,000.

The experts say it is better to act sooner, rather than later. Consult a financial adviser and a lawyer when drafting your estate plan – each has a valuable role to play.

Taking these steps was how Gerald Sindler and his wife discovered their financial house was not in order.

“Not only did we have to worry about some distant future time,” he said, “it brought it into the very real present for us.”

GRAPHIC: timothy cook illustration

April 25, 1999
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A MALEVOLENT HULK Sunken ship continues to claim lives By MICHAEL O. ALLEN

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullWednesday, August 26, 1998

NEW YORK–On a foggy July night in 1956, 52 people died when the cruise ship Stockholm rammed the luxury liner Andrea Doria off Nantucket Island.

But 42 years later, even as the Andrea Doria lies a rusting hulk 240 feet under the Atlantic Ocean, its appetite for blood has not been quelled.

From 1981 through last year, seven divers had lost their lives in search of sport or riches rumored to be beneath the ship’s collapsed deck. Since June 28, three more have died in the dark and deep waters of the North Atlantic.

For divers, the Andrea Doria holds an almost mystical allure.

But it is sinking deeper into the seabed, and its insides are rotted out, with webs of cables everywhere that often snare divers. They risk being blinded by silt stirred by their own motions. And the ocean itself is subject to capricious changes.

Craig Sicola of Surf City, N.J., died June 28 after suffering decompression illness while exploring the wreck.

The body of Richard Roost was discovered July 9, floating face-down in the mud inside the ship’s first-class bar and lounge area. Like Sicola, Roost, 46, of Ann Arbor, Mich., was an experienced diver.

Vincent Napoliello, a 32-year-old stockbroker who lived in Brooklyn, was the latest of Andrea Doria’s victims.

Napoliello was a careful man, those who knew him said. He came home to his apartment one day to find his fiance, Marisa Gengaro, sitting on the sofa wearing a helmet.

“Marisa, what are you doing?” the puzzled Napoliello asked.

“Well, Vincent, accidents do happen in the home, you know,” Gengaro jokingly replied.

“I was making fun of him because he was just so careful about everything,” she said.

By all accounts, Napoliello took that care to his sport, where he was recognized not only as a top-notch diver, but also as a conservative, well-prepared wreck explorer.

William Cleary, a 37-year-old lawyer from Hackensack, N.J., who had been Napoliello’s dive partner for several years, said Napoliello always told everyone not to take foolish chances.

Napoliello’s message was simple: If you run into trouble, leave. You can always go back.

“Vincent had been there for me inside shipwrecks, on a few occasions saving my life,” Cleary said, “including on the day that he died–on the dive prior. He freed me from an entanglement.”

Built at a cost of $ 30 million shortly after World War II and called the Grand Dame of the Sea, the 700-foot, 11-story Andrea Doria was a virtual floating museum of murals, rare wooden panels, and ceramics and mirrors commissioned by its owner, the Italian Line.

Designed with 22 watertight compartments, it was advertised as unsinkable.

It was en route to New York City on the night of July 25, 1956, from Genoa, Italy, with more than 1,600 people aboard when it was broadsided by the smaller Stockholm, whose 750 passengers and crew were bound for Sweden.

It took the Andrea Doria 11 hours to sink, plenty of time for valuables to be removed. But that has not stopped rumors of treasures being locked in her compartments or strewn on the ocean floor.

And a purser’s safe, where passengers kept jewelry and other valuables, is one of 16 still believed to be in the wreck 46 miles off Nantucket.

The most famous explorer of the Andrea Doria was department store heir Peter Gimbel.

In 1981, Gimbel brought up a Bank of Italy safe from the wreck. It contained only soggy paper currency.

His quest for the safe nearly killed Gimbel. He was brought up unconscious, suffering from oxygen poisoning, on his first dive that year. Afterward, he declared that the wreck had a “malevolent spirit.”

The ship’s reputation doesn’t deter several hundred technical divers–those trained to go below 130 feet–from exploring the wreck each summer. About a dozen charter vessels ferry divers from late June to early August.

Napoliello was one of them.

On his first trip of the season, in late June, he and other divers discovered a china closet full of cups, saucers, bowls and pitchers, all bearing the Italian Line logo in gold leaf.

Napoliello returned a week later, on the Fourth of July weekend, and salvaged more artifacts.

On Aug.3, Napoliello was among 12 passengers and three crew members aboard The Seeker, the most active of the Andrea Doria dive vessels, as it departed Montauk Harbor on Long Island.

Anticipating success on this last trip of the season, Napoliello brought cigars and Scotch. The boat reached the site about 8 a.m. the next day, and about an hour later, Napoliello and Cleary made their first dive.

Later in the day, Napoliello dove without Cleary, who was exploring another deck on the ship. Instead, he went down with a man making his first trip to the Doria.

Cleary said Napoliello went into the foyer deck through an opening known as Gimbel’s Hole, down to a depth of about 210 feet, then swam toward the back of the ship to the china closet.

According to Cleary, Napoliello had been breathing the necessary pressurized gas mixtures out of just one side of his double tanks, instead of both. A valve that regulated breathing from both sides somehow had shut off, Cleary said.

So Napoliello thought he was running out of air. He motioned to his partner that he was going up, Cleary said. But instead of using the anchor line on which the Seeker was moored to the wreck, Napoliello swam toward the anchor line for another dive boat, the Sea Inn, a move that has puzzled his colleagues, because Napoliello had not made other mistakes that disoriented or panicked divers make.

At that point, Napoliello had been in the ship for about 17 minutes. Instead of ascending slowly, taking about an hour and breathing gas mixtures with more oxygen to expel the helium and nitrogen from his system, he surfaced in three minutes.

Cleary said Napoliello must have passed out outside the hull of the Andrea Doria, and his lungs ruptured as he floated to the surface.

He had no vital signs when he was pulled aboard the Sea Inn. The Coast Guard was called and helicoptered him to Cape Cod Hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.

Medical examiners are still waiting for results of tests to determine what killed him.

Cleary said it would be an insult to Napoliello for him to stop diving.

“I could picture him saying, ‘I’m dead now, and you are not going to do this anymore?”‘

August 26, 1998
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FENFLURAMINE STUDY HURT BOY: Single Dose of Controversial Drug Altered Personality, She Says By MICHAEL O. ALLEN

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, April 26, 1998

The Brooklyn woman said she got a letter telling her to bring her 8-year-old son to the state psychiatric institute for a survey on children whose older brothers had been convicted in Family Court of crimes as juveniles.

“They wanted to do a study on my son to find out if he had any behavioral problems,” said the woman, who spoke to the Daily News on condition that no one in her family be identified.

Last week, she was in tears after reading in The News that the study was steeped in controversy, with critics blasting the use of fenfluramine on children and questioning the use of only black and Latino boys. The Food and Drug Administration last year banned fenfluramine, the offending half of the prescription diet drug fen-phen. The researchers, meanwhile, issued statements denying wrongdoing, but refused to discuss their studies.

In all, the parents of 34 boys ages 6 to 10 made the trip to the New York State Psychiatric Institute in Washington Heights in 1994 and 1995. The boys fasted for 12 hours, were given psychiatric and psychological tests, then a single oral 10 mg. dose of fenfluramine. Then, while hooked to a catheter, they had blood drawn each hour for about five hours.

The Brooklyn woman said she and her son were given $ 230, plus a $ 100 Toys “R” Us gift certificate for their participation, then were sent home.

But that is no solace to the Brooklyn woman.

Her son was happy-go-lucky, did well in school and never had a behavioral problem. But she figured she had to cooperate with the letter because an older son was incarcerated on a robbery conviction.

Her son ceased being his happy-go-lucky self soon after the experiment, she said. The boy, now 11, suffers anxiety attacks, has severe headaches, has developed a learning disability and is about to be put in special-education classes.

Claudia Bial, a spokeswoman for the psychiatric institute, expressed surprise at the symptoms the boy’s mother described.

“A single dose of fenfluramine poses no risk,” Bial said. “I’m sorry that the child suffered these things, but I don’t think it has anything to do with that one dose.”

But critics of the studies disagree with Bial. Vera Hassner Sharav, the head of Citizens for Responsible Care in Psychiatry and Research, cited a study published in 1996 in the journal Society of Biological Psychiatry that said a single dose of fenfluramine had been shown to cause headaches, lightheadedness and difficulty concentrating in 90% of adults who took just one dose of the drug.

“Since there is no study to show the drug is safe for children, but there is plenty of evidence to show that it is unsafe for adults and it is unsafe for animals I mean it causes brain damage in animals you would think that little children would never be exposed to it,” she said.

Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Queens College Psychology Department conducted a study about the same time, experimenting on a group of boys diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder. That study and the one that tested the Brooklyn woman’s son were trying to determine: Were these boys predisposed to violence or crime?

Some criminologists and psychiatrists increasingly use fenfluramine in studies to stimulate and measure serotonin in the brain. The more serotonin a person has, the less likely he or she is to engage in anti-social behavior, they hypothesize.

Evan Balaban, senior fellow in experimental neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif., is a leading critic of the fenfluramine behavioral genetic studies. The studies have become more prevalent in the past 10 years.

“What people were trying to say beforehand which I believe I’ve shown is not true is that they [those prone to violence] are not releasing enough serotonin and that for some reasons, which are not specified very well, this predisposes you to violent behavior,” he said.

Irving Gottesman, a professor of psychology and genetics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, defended fenfluramine studies, saying they help researchers understand individual differences in human aggression, He said the studies could lead to interventions that are ethical and based on science.

April 26, 1998
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SENIOR CITY-ZENS; They left only to find there’s no place like home

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, October 26, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

Horst Liepolt left New York City in 1995 for Berlin, where he was born 70 years ago, only to discover his heart belongs to the Big Apple.

Ditto for Dolores White, now retired, who yearns to live in the city again.

Howard and Arlene Sommer, in their 50s, are giving the city another whirl after their children flew the coop. And, two years into their return from a 40-year sojourn in suburbia, Mort and Sonia Goldstein are loving every second of life in the city.

In all the good notices New York City is getting for its historic reduction in crime and improved quality of life, not to mention the burgeoning economy, a little-remarked-upon but growing trend is that the city is also becoming haven to a group that appreciates the big town’s excitement: retirees and the so-called “empty nesters.”

Although statistically difficult to measure, anecdotal evidence confirms that a growing number of retirees, especially former New Yorkers, are choosing the city and spurning such traditional retirement locales as Florida, California and Arizona.

Commissioner Herbert Stupp of the city Department for the Aging said he is not surprised.

“It’s a very senior-friendly city, perhaps the most in the country,” he said.

New York is a good place to grow old because of all its conveniences, including access to health care, the most developed mass transit network in the Western Hemisphere and discounts everywhere for seniors, Stupp said.

Retirees themselves cite the ease with which they can live, the excitement of the city and its cultural offerings.

But Charles Longino Jr., a demographer at Wake Forest University, was brutally blunt on the reason the elderly are returning to the city.

“They are coming back because they’ve gotten old and widowed in Florida, and their health is failing, and they want to be near their families,” he said.

Andrew McPherson, a junior equity research analyst at Salomon Brothers, concurs.

Seniors often move to warmer climates when they retire, he said. But as they hit their mid-80s, especially when one spouse dies, they have a harder time getting along on their own.

“The kids still live up in the Northeast. Then the issue is, every time Grandma slips and falls or has a problem, the kids have to hop on a plane and fly down to Florida,” McPherson said.

It makes more sense for Granny to be near the family.

And, sensing a need, developers in the city are offering upscale continuing care and assisted-living apartment buildings, where older residents receive personal care, including help with getting dressed, bathing and medication.

Glenn Kaplan, chairman of the Kapson Group, which owns and operates 20 such facilities in the region, said his firm has another 22 on the drawing board or under construction, including five scheduled to open in the city within three months. Other developers recently opened senior care apartment buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Other evidence supports retirees who say they are returning because of their love of the city and what it offers. Real estate firms, which are on the front line of selling and renting homes and apartments to the returnees, say they are experiencing a boom.

Andrew Heiberger, president of Citi Habitats, which rents more than 3,500 apartments a year in the city, said returnees make up about 6% of his business, up from about half that just a few years ago. His firm found an apartment for Horst Liepolt just this month.

Liepolt was a Grammy-winning jazz record producer who ran the Sweet Basil jazz club in Greenwich Village for 10 years before returning to Berlin with his wife, Clarita, two years ago.

“I thought with the Wall coming down, and with the whole rebuilding thing, it was going to be like the Wild West and honky-tonk, something happening, excitement,” Liepolt said.

He found quite the opposite.

“In those 2 1/2 years, there was no excitement, only Doomsville.”

Contrast that to an awestruck Liepolt visiting New York for the first time almost 40 years ago.

“You see it in movies, you see it in pictures, but it was another thing to actually be here. It was amazing. That was it. I felt very good and right at home,” Liepolt said.

It’s a sentiment Howard Sommer, a 57-year-old president of an investment fund who was born and reared in the South Bronx, understands.

Sommer’s journey took him briefly through Chicago before plopping him down in Long Island for 30 years of the whole suburban treatment: two children, a big house on 31 /2 acres, a swimming pool and a tennis court.

But when the kids grew up and went to college and, upon graduation, moved to Manhattan, Howard and Arlene Sommer, 55, found themselves with too much house. Howard was itching to get back to the city, but his wife was not too sure she was ready to give up the space and comfort of their home and the bonds she formed over the years.

They sold the home anyway and have been renting a Manhattan apartment for seven months now. Arlene is back in school studying to become a psychoanalyst. And Howard is having a terrific time.

“At this point in my life I want to be in the middle of everything,” Sommer said. “I love stepping out of my apartment and being on the streets and all the people and the energy and the excitement. . . . It’s good to be a New Yorker again.”

When she turned 65, Sonia Goldstein decided it was time that she and her husband, Mort, leave Plainview, L.I., and return to the city, where he was reared.

The dossier: 40 years in the suburbs, three children, a dog and a large house that had an office for Mort, a psychologist. He needed some convincing because the move meant ending his practice. Solution came in the form of a two-day-a-week practice on Fire Island. He feels now he has the best of both worlds.

And Sonia is just loving it.

“New York is the place to be when you are retired,” she said. “You are not dependent on a car. You can get to wherever you want to go with mass transportation, and you are not locked in isolation in your home.”

The couple has subscriptions to practically all the cultural institutions in the city.

“The way we get together with friends that we don’t see as much anymore is we have subscriptions with them,” Sonia Goldstein said. “So, I have a subscription to Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theater Club, the Roundabout and then in between, my daughter and I love the ballet so we go to that, either traditional ballet or Alvin Ailey.”

The older-than-60 crowd numbers 1.3 million in a city of 7 1/2 million people, so cultural institutions, even as they court families and younger audiences, find their base is highly dependent on retirees.

At the Roundabout Theatre Company, for instance, more than 30% of the 35,000 people on its subscription roll identify themselves as retired, said marketing director David Steffen.

“It’s important that everyone realize that there is this huge influx of people coming back into the city,” he said.

Dolores White, for one, has been to all the retirement places and thought they were nice — but not for her.

And when she says “I’m a city girl,” she doesn’t mean just any city.

“I’ve been to Chicago, which I liked. I was in San Francisco. I liked it. I’ve been to Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, but I like New York the best,” White said.

The 68-year-old former teacher grew up in Brooklyn, and remembers cutting class to see Frank Sinatra at the Paramount in the 1940s. She remembers Harlem, Little Italy and Chinatown.

She is now working on exchanging her rambling East Northport, L.I., home for an apartment in the Tribeca-Battery Park area, or in Brooklyn Heights.

“There’s such an array of cultural activities, restaurants, shopping . . . you could just sit on the stairs of some of the office buildings and people-watch for hours,” White said.

The city’s rejuvenation recalls for her the old days.

“We felt very free in those days, traveled in the subway with ease. I see that coming back. I see it coming back again. That is what is drawing me back to moving back to the city,” she said.

Original Story Date: 10/26/97

October 26, 1997
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Rudy Pooh-Poohs Dem Bigs’ Digs

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, October 26, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and LISA REIN Daily News Staff Writers

With a comfortable lead in the polls, Mayor Giuliani yesterday refused to engage in a war of words with Democratic challenger Ruth Messinger — even allowing harsh comments from his predecessor, former Mayor David Dinkins, to go unchallenged.

Dinkins, who spent the better part of a rainy afternoon campaigning with Messinger in Brooklyn and Queens, accused Republican Giuliani of running an “out-of-control” campaign that would “self-destruct” before Election Day.

“I predict that Mayor Giuliani has a great capacity to self-destruct, and I think he’s going to do that in the next 10 days,” Dinkins said, at times stealing the spotlight from Messinger yesterday.

“He’s out of control right now,” Dinkins continued, recalling the mayor’s blistering attack on Messinger for not attending Mass on Columbus Day. “He seems to think that the whole world started on Jan. 1, 1994, when he became mayor.”

But Giuliani, crisscrossing the city with campaign stops in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Harlem and Throgs Neck in the Bronx, refrained from attacking Dinkins, saying only, “The best thing for me to do with a question like that is to say, ‘I’m not going to respond.’ ”

When asked if he thought Dinkins could rescue Messinger’s flagging campaign, the mayor said he “couldn’t evaluate the other side.”

The mayor’s comments came at Sylvia’s Restaurant, a Harlem landmark where he capped a swing through clothing stores along W. 125th St., receiving warm greetings from proprietors.

Earlier, the mayor tasted meatball calzones and onion rings on his first-ever tour of a superstore, the Costco in Sunset Park. The visit came a day after he pledged to mount an aggressive campaign to revive his failed proposal to speed up the opening of more megastores if he wins reelection.

But as he marched in the small Parade of Flags along Fifth Ave. just a few miles away, some merchants told the mayor that superstores would decimate their mom-and-pop stores.

Messinger campaigned in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, getting thumbs-ups from shoppers and merchants along Broadway.

She then took the stage with Dinkins at the Panamanian Day parade in Brooklyn, where she accused Giuliani of positioning himself for a run for national office, a move she insisted would push him to the right politically and divert his concerns from the city’s schools.

Giuliani denied the charge, calling it an “irrelevant issue” and calling his “sole focus” his race for reelection.

Original Story Date: 10/26/97

October 26, 1997
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SAL WHO? Runs Strong 3rd

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Wednesday, September 10, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JERE HESTER, Daily News Staff Writers

Maverick City Councilman Sal Albanese surprised the experts again last night with a strong third-place finish in the Democratic mayoral primary.

The 47-year-old Brooklyn lawmaker had 21% of the vote with 99% of ballots counted — a good showing by a candidate who was met with responses of “Sal who?” when he announced his candidacy in March 1996.

“We came up short in . . . a tremendous battle for the soul of New York,” Albanese said in his concession speech at the New York Hilton last night, as his supporters chanted, “Sal! Sal! Sal!”

He said he hadn’t decided whom to support in the run-off. “I’m a Democrat, I’m a strong Democrat, but tonight I’m not going to make any decision,” said Albanese (pictured, with his daughter), who left the door open to a potential run as an independent candidate in November’s general election.

Albanese, who ran his grass-roots, citywide campaign on a shoestring budget of less than $900,000, blamed money woes for not being able to take out TV advertisements until the race’s final days.

“We ran hard and we ran against all the odds. But we never gave up,” said Albanese, who made labor and wage issues the centerpiece of his campaign.

“It’s clear that we began to connect with the voters,” he said. “We just could not reach enough people. We shook a lot of hands. But you have 8 million people in this city, you have 2 1/2 million registered voters. You have to get on the air.”

Still, for Albanese, the third-place showing marked a high point in his quirky political career.

It wasn’t the first time that the Italian immigrant and former public school teacher has surprised naysayers.

“Sal has always fooled the experts,” said his campaign manager, Don Crouch.

A graduate of John Jay High School in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn and York College in Queens, Albanese launched his political career in 1982 by ousting Brooklyn City Councilman Angelo Arculeo, a 29-year incumbent.

He quickly made his mark as a maverick who often defied Council Speaker Peter Vallone (D-Queens) and his conservative Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst constituents by backing liberal causes such as gay and abortion rights.

On the campaign trail, he hammered Mayor Giuliani for doling out tax breaks to big corporations that pay low wages to nonunion laborers.

His mayoral platform called for cutting taxes for small business. But he also pushed to raise income taxes for families earning more than $150,000 and for suburban residents who work in the city.

He wrote and worked with fellow council members long enough to pass a popular piece of legislation requiring city contractors to pay prevailing union wages.

Original Story Date: 091097

September 10, 1997
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Don’t Sell Cops Short, Says Rudy

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, August 31, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and PAUL SCHWARTZMAN, Daily News Staff Writers

A day after thousands protesting police brutality marched on City Hall, Mayor Giuliani yesterday sought to refocus attention on cops’ accomplishments while his chief rival took the day off.

Eleven days before the Democratic primary, front-runner Ruth Messinger spent the day out of sight with her family, while opponents Sal Albanese and the Rev. Al Sharpton reached for votes in Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens.

Of the Democratic candidates, only Sharpton invoked the rally and the alleged police torture on Abner Louima, as he has since the reports of the incident first surfaced three weeks ago.

Greeting a cheering Latino crowd in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Giuliani said it was time for the public to cease castigating cops.

“Yesterday, over a 24-hour period, there was one murder in New York City,” Giuliani said. “That didn’t happen because the Police Department aren’t doing its job.

“They are saving lives in New York City while some people have been spending time excessively bashing them. That’s a big mistake. That has to stop.”

Giuliani also praised the cops for enduring during Friday’s demonstration a torrent of curses and taunts that they are racists and Nazis.

“That’s a lot of people who are calling you names, rushing up towards you, using words like Nazis and fascists — things that should just not be said,” he said, adding that the cops’ restraint showed that they are the “finest police department” in the country.

Although protesters castigated Giuliani during the march — at which Messinger, Sharpton and former Mayor David Dinkins spoke — one political analyst said the mayor would not suffer politically from the event.

“The real story — that the police and the marchers were able to maintain civility — is a plus for him,” said Mitchell Moss, director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University.

Approaching the final week before the Sept. 9 primary, Messinger today plans to speak at a Brooklyn church service and campaign in Riverdale. Yesterday, she was nowhere to be found.

“She is spending it with her family,” said campaign spokesman Lee Jones, adding that it was the Manhattan borough president’s last chance for a respite before “eight weeks of solid fun and games with Uncle Rudy.”

Sharpton, for his part, sought to seize on the protest’s aftermath to attack Giuliani at a rally of approximately 200 supporters in Harlem.

“It gives people the idea that he can’t deal with issues other than his own pat issues,” Sharpton said afterward. “He can’t deal with unemployment, he can’t deal with schools and he can’t deal with police brutality. He’s a good law enforcement guy, but that’s the end of it.”

Touring Queens, Albanese said, when asked, that he hopes Friday’s demonstration focuses attention on what he said was Giuliani’s failure to deal with police brutality.

“You can’t lay the [Louima] incident at his doorstep,” he said, “but everyone is focusing on abuse. It focuses attention on the department and how it has addressed abuse.”

August 31, 1997
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Plungers Waved In Angry March

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, August 17, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, CAROLINA GONZALEZ and PAUL SCHWARTZMAN, Daily News Staff Writers

Brandishing toilet plungers and chanting “KKK must go!” thousands of angry protesters yesterday descended on Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct, where two cops have been charged with torturing a Haitian immigrant.

Pressed tightly against a line of cops standing behind police barricades, the mostly Haitian crowd jammed the street outside the Flatbush stationhouse where two cops, Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz, allegedly beat Abner Louima before shoving a toilet plunger into his rectum last week.

Louima watched the demonstration from the intensive care unit at Brooklyn Hospital Center, where he is recovering.

Louima “felt very good that people are upset about what happened and that they were making their voices heard,” his lawyer Carl Thomas said.

As temperatures steamed into the mid-90s, the raucous crowd swelled to 4,000, with many pounding drums, dancing, and hoisting Haitian flags and plungers in the air in a racially charged, sometimes carnival-like scene.

Despite scattered skirmishes, no one was arrested in the tense stand-off as police brass took pains to adopt a conciliatory tone, even as many in the crowd chanted, “Pig,” “Shame on you,” and, “Seven-O, KKK.”

Someone from the crowd lobbed an empty water bottle, hitting a police officer in the eye. The officer was not hurt, but as a precaution, six officers were stationed on the rooftop of a one-story building across the street from the stationhouse.

The bottle throwing occurred around 7 p.m. after a late afternoon storm reduced the crowd to about 75.

During the height of the protest, marchers also shouted racial epithets and taunted the officers by waving the plungers in their faces.

“It’s Giuliani Time,” read one demonstrator’s sign, a reference to Louima’s claim that the cops told him, “This is Giuliani time, not Dinkins time” as they beat him.

Another sign displayed a photograph of Volpe with horns protruding from his head, accompanied by a caption that read, “Devil in a Blue Suit.”

Assistant Police Chief Patrick Brennan said the demonstrators “are mad as hell, and they have the right to be.”

“They want to get the most out of their demonstration, and who can blame them?” he asked.

Deputy Police Chief Wilbur Chapman conceded that the torture incident has “fractured” the community’s fragile relationship with the police. But he said the precinct’s new commander, Inspector Raymond Diaz, would “work hard to restore the faith.”

“One particularly horrific incident doesn’t negate all the terrific work that has been done,” Chapman said.

But that was not a sentiment held by many in the crowd, which began gathering in the morning outside Club Rendez-Vous, the Flatbush nightclub where Louima’s fracas with cops began early Aug. 9.

“In Haiti we went through all these things,” said Marie Toussaint, 36. “It’s a shock to find the same thing going on in the United States.”

Roy Sargent, 55, a former Flatbush resident, said he drove to the march from his home in Piscataway, N.J., because he wanted to be counted among the voices expressing outrage.

“We put the Police Department in uniform to serve and protect us, and this is what they’re going to do us?” he asked incredulously. “This has to stop.”

Others vowed to protest in front of the stationhouse every day.

The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke to the smaller crowd assembled at the precinct stationhouse.

“We’re not against the police; we’re against police brutality,” Sharpton told the demonstrators.

Standing nearby, Jonas Louima, 25, Abner Louima’s brother, said he hoped that the restless crowds would remain peaceful.

“I don’t want fights,” he said. “I want people to express what they feel without violence.”

Louima’s friend, Ian Joseph, said the steps taken by Police Commissioner Howard Safir to punish cops in the precinct did not send a strong enough message that brutality is unacceptable.

“They shift one and the other, but before they start firing people it won’t change,” he said. “If the cops had to live among us, they might fear that we might see them the next day, and it would be very different.”

Original Story Date: 08/17/97

August 17, 1997
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Whining Is Waste, Crew Sez to Union By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and DAVE SALTONSTALL, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, May 18, 1997

Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew yesterday told city teachers to raise the academic performance of their schools and “to do this within the context of not blaming people.”

“Who has time to blame anyone?” Crew asked in a speech to more than 2,000 members of the city’s United Federation of Teachers, gathered in Manhattan for their annual convention.

“We have thousands of children who can’t spell blame,” Crew said. “This is about 65,000 teachers, every administrator, every parent within any sound or sight of this school system, accepting collective and full responsibility for 1 million children.”

Crew made light of two perennial complaints by city high school teachers — that students are ill-prepared by their lower school teachers and that parents fail to take an active role in educating their children.

“If those parents would send us the really smart kids that are somewhere in their homes every day, we wouldn’t have those problems,” Crew joked. “And if those primary teachers, if they had just done their jobs . . .”

Crew’s speech came after two Democratic mayoral candidates took questions from some of the union’s 130,000 members, who make it among the most potent electoral forces in the city.

Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger and City Councilman Sal Albanese of Brooklyn agreed on most issues, differing only on whether Regents exams should be written and offered in four foreign languages, as the state Education Department has proposed.

Albanese said he would be “very cautious” about supporting such a proposal, given the bureaucratic and cultural complexities of administering the tests.

Messinger, meanwhile, offered strong suppport for the foreign language tests, as long as all students still had to pass a “very high level proficiency test in English before they graduate.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, did not attend yesterday’s question-and-answer forum because of a schedule conflict.

May 19, 1997
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